Things like this, don't happen to people like me
by Miyo-Nani
Summary: Kaneki's internal struggle to accept his new Ghoul identity. Dark, one-shot. Rated T for gore, and violence.


When Kaneki saw the news each night, speaking in loud, unheard volumes throughout his small apartment, he deliberately turned the other way. _My, _he would think, _How the world has changed. _Reports of people going missing, or corpses lying half consumed in the streets were the highlight of most news reports now a days. It turned his stomach at such thoughts of evil. But that was just how the world was.

Even so, he shook his head, and turned off the television. Why should he be worried? After all, things like _that, _didn't happen to people like him. He wasn't one of those careless people. One of those unlucky few, who had the displeasure of being targeted by the demonic ghouls. He was, after all, a fine young university student, with good friends, and a thriving social life. He wasn't one of _those_ people.

~ 3 ~

When Kaneki scored a date with with the women of his dreams, he didn't take much time to thank his lucky stars. He chalked it up to one more situation that was, but befitting to a person in his stature. Charming, intelligent, and independent. Why should he not get the women of his dreams?

Despite his arrogance, he was hypnotized by the way her hair fell over her thin shoulders in lavender waves, and the way she licked her lips after she talked too much, for too long about her favorite books. He didn't mind the way her eyes lingered on him a split second to long, and loved it when her long, thin fingers brushed the path of his collar bone from his chin, to his neck. He was fine with it all, intoxicated by the enchanting persona that she had put on.

For almost a week he ignored the news reports, looming student bills, and preasure to get a job. Because he was happy, and he was safe, and he was sure of the future. Nothing could go wrong. Especially with her in his life now.

After all, bad things didn't happen to people like him.

~ 3 ~

He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe this at all. He gasped for breath that wouldn't come as the pipes crushed his body further. This couldn't be the end! He was so sure that he would live. That he would get a job, and raise a family, and grow old with the person he loved. How could it all end so soon? He felt the life fading from him like evaporating water. He never quite believed in heaven. It's not that he protested the existence of a deity. But, he knows that he would have liked a little...proof. That all seemed so bigoted now. He was fading fast. Vision focusing in from black, too a blur of colors, who's origin was unknown. This was the end. Nobody would ever find him under this pile of cold metal, and blood. Or so he thought until he heard distant voices. Their words like a foreign language he could only pick out the few medical terms they muttered in hush, fast voices. He breathed a sigh of releaf. At least he had been found. His parents, and best friend would have closure, and could move on. He wouldn't become a missing person like the rest of the ghoul victims, and once again, he was reassured in the fact that things like that didn't happen to people like him.

~ 3 ~

"Oh good." A soft voice mumbled. "You're awake." Kaneki forced his eyes open. An act that seemed to take up most of his strength. His vision focused and unfocused on the object in front of him. His mother. All prim, and proper, and professional.

"Mom." He mumbled. The women smiled down at him, and smoothed out his hair.

"I'm so glad you are alive." She mumbled letting her finger trace his face. "I..." she began. "I was afraid that I was going to end up like one of those parents." She whispered. "The ones who lose their children." Kaneki forced a smile, and laid his hand atop hers.

"I'm alive." He said. His mothers eyes widened, and tears began to pool at the base.

"I know."

~ 3 ~

For the first few weeks, none of it was real. When he heard the stories of people going missing around his apartment complex, he turned off the t.v, radio, or threw out the newspapers. None of that was true, and it had nothing to do with him. He was safe, he had cheated death. The close encounter of his life was over and done with. It could happen to his neighbor, or his friends, or even family, but never to him. He was safe. He wasn't one of those people.

When his friends noticed something off about him, he ignored it. When they commented on his new found starring problem, he brushed it off as post traumatic stress. And when they mentioned his lack of appetite, he would say he ate earlier in the day. None of it was real to him, and he was normal. He would eat with his friends, and look at them as people, and not meals. He would be normal, and human. Because things like this, didn't happen to people like him. Never. Never to people like him.

~3 ~

When he woke up bathed in a sea of blood, and internals the first thing he did was deny it. _This is a mistake. I didn't kill these people. I am a victim here. _Yet, he found that laying in the remains of a human corpse cleared his senses like none other. It was like the softest bed he could imagine. It felt soft, warm, natural. He felt full, the hunger gone, and his sanity restored. Yet, still he denied it. He surely was not the monster responsible for supplying the mangled, torn apart, mess of blood laying on his living room floor.

Yet, despite this, he cleaned the pool of blood in secrecy. Wondering where the rest of the corpse went, yet he already knew the answer to that. He washed the blood down his sink, and threw bones, and tissue masses into his garbage. And when he brushed that night, he pretended not to notice the blood that stained his teeth.

Kaneki began to realize that the blackouts were like a gift from god. How pleasant, that he didn't have to remember, or face the facts about how he got his food. Yet they did not last. When he woke up in his familier sea of blood, he began to have flash-backs of how he had gotten there. Who's blood it was that he was laying in, and eventually, recalling a name.

_Sarah_

_Izumi_

_Anni _

The names brought nothing but a wave of nausea and vomit. How could he!? Him, Ken Kaneki, kill a person. Murder them, tear them apart, and consume their flesh. Yet these thoughts of regret were not enough too stop him. And eventually, he had to eat again. He held out for many months. Somehow controlling the hunger, and keeping his sanity in check. He knew it was kill or be killed. Which may have been the reason that he pulled on his darkest sweater one night, and pulled the hood over his head. He left his apartment as though one may be leaving to go see a friend. Not murder a human. He locked his door slowly, and began to walk down the stairs in a calm trudge.

He must have walked for a mile or two before he arrived at the Lanturn district of Tokyo. Famous for it's prostitution, and it's ability to turn the other cheek at the sight of a horrid crime. After choosing a dark ally that was closed off from the world, he stood and waited. Many people walked by. Many indeed. Some laughing, some talking on their cell phone, or some simply getting from point A to point B in a comfortable silence. The idea that he could grab just one, and pull them into his dark, death trap was always on the surface of his subconscious. Despite the growing hunger, he waited. For just. The. Right. One.

Finally he noticed a boy walk by. Around university student age. 5'5 and soft looking. He licked his lips, and followed the path of his collar bone from his chin to his neck with his eyes. _Perfect. Easy to chew. Easy to digest. _He reached pale, ill-intented hand out of the darkness, and grasped the soft fabric of his shirt, and pulled him in easily to the dark, dessalent ally.

"Woah! Hey, let me go, man!" The boy began to yell, before Kaneki placed his hand over his mouth and drug him deeper into the ally.

He allowed himself to feel the hunger, and felt his eye turn black, and blood red. _Yes,_ he thought. _It's time to eat. He will make a fine meal. _

The boy noticed his eye, and it was as though Kaneki could hear the gears turning in the boys head. Making sense of his impending doom. Realization clicked like the snap of his fingers, and his prey began began to scream a muffled scream, into his hand. He began to try to push, and squirm himself out of Kaneki's grasp too no avail. Getting tired of his meals fruitless struggle, he pushed him to the cold ground, and climbed on top of him. Debating wether to kill him quickly, or eat him alive.

"_Please_." The boy sobbed. "_Please don't do this_." He cried thick, hot tears that smelled sweet, and then sour. Curiosity overtook Kaneki, and he leaned down, letting his long tongue flick a hot tear off of his victims face, and into his mouth. His face scrunched when the taste was neither sour, nor sweet, but a overwhelming salty taste instead. Kaneki smiled a menacing, mad grin, and reveled in his dinners cries, and screams. When the prey realized that his pleas would not be heard, his body went limp, and Kaneki set to work. Allowing his teeth too begin tearing into his stomach. He never realized how much he missed the sudden gush of blood into his mouth, and the satisfying crunch of the bones under his teeth.

"_How_." The boy sobbed. "_How could this have happened to me_?" He cried again. "_Things... Things like this! They don't happen to people like me_!" He yelled. Kaneki stopped eating for a second, and glanced over his shoulder to see if anybody was investigating the sounds coming from his dark ally. He turned back to his pray, and scuffed. Eyes dilated, and red, blood dripping form his teeth, and onto the face of it's origin.

"How naive." He said.

"No more talking." And with a crunch of bones, and a quick flick of his wrist, the boys neck broke, and he went back to his meal.

**Okay! So let me know what you thought! Please review for more one-shots like these! **

**~M!yo :3**


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